Dymond: The field reps and carriers were asking, “Why don’t you guys advertise?” I do remember asking the question, and it came down to, “We don’t need to.” Being successful at RIM was all about being close to the carriers. I’m not sure what we were doing to get customers in the door.Michaluk: When iPhone 3G and Bold 9000 came out at the same time, I ripped the [Bold 9000] apart in an article because the browser was completely unusable. BlackBerry launched that Web browser without it really working. That Bold 9000 browser was one of the cracks in the egg.

Washington: One thing we missed out on was that Justin Bieber wanted to rep BlackBerry. He said, “Give me $200,000 and 20 devices, and I’m your brand ambassador,” basically. And we pitched that to marketing: Here’s a Canadian kid, he grew up here, all the teeny-boppers will love that. They basically threw us out of the room. They said, “This kid is a fad. He’s not going to last.” I said at the meeting: “This kid might outlive RIM.” Everyone laughed.

I can't remember if I've told this story before but a few years ago I had a meeting with a senior UK BBRY figure, his words to me were "We don't follow the market, we ARE the market".

Sounds very much like the corporate culture that has lead to BlackBerry not understanding the market they once controlled.

I had expect the PlayBook to have taught BlackBerry a critical lesson about the need to provide competitive pricing, an OS with features and most importantly that a device without applications that people wanted to use was unsaleable.... but I guess it is our fault for not understanding the market that BlackBerry invisions.

Thanks for posting that. It was a very interesting, and well edited, article.

You can almost feel the momentum draining from the company as the story unfolds. The sense of MikeL as a typical engineer, more interested in exploring neat ideas than in commercially marketable product, shines through.

And the tale about the pearl flip phone being introduced mostly because it had a neat hinge design the engineers wanted to show off despite every survey saying consumers wanted candy bars has the perfect ring of truth (sadly).

The surprise, for me, was how much I'm warming to JimB. I've always regarded him as a bit of a snake-oil salesman in the past. The more I read about him (here and elsewhere), I get the sense of someone struggling to inject a sense of commercial reality in a room full of techies obsessed by "clever tech" and who (through arrogance?) can't see that their world is changing.

I'm sure Jim smiles a wry grin now that BBM has gone cross-platform and might actually become a success. One of his ideas that was roundly ridiculed.

In Canada at the time, dot-coms were notorious for ripping off U.S. ideas. Bid.com was supposed to be the EBay (EBAY) for Canada; JobShark was the Monster.com (MWW). They’d get funding and generate all this excitement. Meanwhile, up walks Jim, who had a truly revolutionary idea, and nobody really thought it would work. It’s an inferiority thing.

Mike L, from what I've read, seems like a seat of your pants type of guy who knew what people wanted. When he ceased to understand the market, he failed to adapt.

Yes, I agree.

The part of the article where his failure to understand that consumers wanted a camera says it all really. It's a form of arrogance, the guy has a brain the size of a planet and I suspect nothing would have ever convinced him that he was wrong in assuming that he knew what was best.

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Jim and Mike were alone together. LOL

The part of the article where his failure to understand that consumers wanted a camera says it all really. It's a form of arrogance, the guy has a brain the size of a planet and I suspect nothing would have ever convinced him that he was wrong in assuming that he knew what was best.

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Jim and Mike were alone together. LOL

I would love to hear story about the meeting of Jobs and Mike L. Both were arrogant and thought they knew the best what the consumers wanted.

Jeff Gadway, current senior manager for product marketing: When you go into the focus groups, and you talk to customers about brands in the technology space, there are brands that don’t come up at all anymore. And then there’s BlackBerry. People have fond sentiments about BlackBerry. If people didn’t have that affinity toward the brand, I would be challenged to really believe in what we’re doing. People want to see BlackBerry succeed.

This guy has to go. They are obviously not doing the focus groups outside of Waterloo because in my recent experience I have not heard anyone (other than a few of the Uber fans here who reality escapes) who have an affinity or are pulling for the brand, and that is dealing in the Federal sector where they still have a presence. I think that this is the major problem at BlackBerry right now, they don't realize that the name BlackBerry in relation to phones has too much negativity tied to it.

This guy has to go. They are obviously not doing the focus groups outside of Waterloo because in my recent experience I have not heard anyone (other than a few of the Uber fans here who reality escapes) who have an affinity or are pulling for the brand, and that is dealing in the Federal sector where they still have a presence. I think that this is the major problem at BlackBerry right now, they don't realize that the name BlackBerry in relation to phones has too much negativity tied to it.

Agree, have heard too many statements from BlackBerry higher ups that just scream that they are out of touch with the real world.

Too many people I know celebrated the day they got rid of their BlackBerry and move to another platform, and to be honest I understand why. Over the last few years the user experience on a BBOS device couldn't touch the experience on an Android or iPhone. I do think that BB10 is getting things right, but I think BlackBerry needed a reality check before they launched.... afterwards might have been a little too late.

This guy has to go. They are obviously not doing the focus groups outside of Waterloo because in my recent experience I have not heard anyone (other than a few of the Uber fans here who reality escapes) who have an affinity or are pulling for the brand, and that is dealing in the Federal sector where they still have a presence. I think that this is the major problem at BlackBerry right now, they don't realize that the name BlackBerry in relation to phones has too much negativity tied to it.

Bear in mind he still works for the company, so you can't expect him to say any different about it - well not if he wants to keep his job... Remember how Mike L rubbished the iPhone in public but we now know that privately he was very worried by the device.

Too much, too fast, or so it seems. When your traveling at 200 mph things go past you without noticing, even a sign saying "bridge out ahead".
Once again Jim seems to be somewhat insight full, as was pointed out in the globe article months back, and yet he couldn't pull it together.
I would hope Mr Chen can put the "FLOW" (that Thornsten Talked about) into blackberry the company, and not just BB10.

I read that other piece from the Globe and Mail about the downfall...was cringe-worthy at every paragraph.

Because the Storm was such a massive pile, Verizon threw their resources behind android to go up against AT&T and iPhone. Oops.

SMS 2.0? Nah, we'll do that later.

And apparently there was a huge deal in place with China to be the exclusive provider, but it also just fizzled out?

I think my Z10 is great, but it appears the Q10 probably should have been the first BB10 device.

Can you imagine where the company would be if they had not taken these missteps?

Also, I'm not a fan of Bieber at all, but having a globally recognizable icon with a rabid fan base would have been a home run. And I think those who say otherwise because they don't personally like or agree with him are suffering the same hubris that took down Mike and Jim.

Money and success has its price, if it comes easy, it will go just as easily, if you work hard at it, it will be just as hard to hold on to it, and Inevitably you destroy yourself in the end, it's the only way to stop the vicious cycle.